"The growth of the Internet has been the most astonishing technological phenomenon of the last decade of this century" stated a recent article in The Economist. It is important to note at the outset that the Internet, as a concept, is still very new to the British public and that first-hand experience of using it is still restricted to a relatively small group of people.

The Internet came into existence in the 1960s, conceived by US military and scientific interests in a Cold War environment. Its founders required a network which would enable sharing of scarce computer resources among research establishments and be capable of surviving a nuclear attack. The network and system protocols were developed with this in mind and the network was also used to perform communications via the development of electronic mail.

The number of users of this network steadily expanded throughout the sixties and seventies, bringing in a range of educational establishments, and international links were established. The network, although expanding, remained the preserve of the scientific and research community and would have seemed impenetrable to anyone else.

Two key developments in the late 1980s and early 1990s laid the foundations for what we know recognise as the Internet. The first of these was the development of 'hypertext' a system of linking and organising related documents through the embedding of address codes or links into bodies of text. Hypertext allows a reader to jump from a document held on one computer to another document held on another computer which could be on the other side of the world by activating the links.

The second key development came with the development of the Mosaic browser which allowed for easy navigation of the Internet via simple mouse clicks. The browser's graphical user interface enabled easy access to graphics, video and sound as well as text files and opened up the Internet to a whole new audience of people with experience of basic Windows and Apple Macintosh operating procedures.

As a consequence of these two developments, participation in the Internet grew at an astonishing rate. In 1990 there were just over 300,000 host computers on the Internet but by mid 1996 this figure had soared to just under 13 million. The growth has been so fast that reliable measurement of the numbers of people accessing the Internet around the world has not been able to keep up. Current estimates suggest some 40-50 million and there are predictions that this figure will reach 200 million by the year 2000.

Such phenomenal growth has put incredible strain upon the network's resources and with more and more people now accessing larger and larger files there have been times when the system has all but ground to a halt.

The core services available via the Internet are communications (electronic mail, news groups and chat), file transfer and the World Wide Web, a collection of multimedia information and entertainment pages connected by hypertext links. The attraction of the Internet lies in its global reach and its ability to connect people with common interests regardless of physical proximity. It is seen as being capable of revolutionising the way in which people work and interact with one another.

The Internet is not controlled or owned by any one company or organisation and as a global medium it does not fall within the jurisdiction of any one country. It is, by its nature, anarchic and this has led to concern in many quarters about some of the information and entertainment services available.

Outside of the US, the UK has been one of the main growth areas for Internet access and development. MAPS estimates that there are currently some 750,000 Internet 'access points' in the UK, including businesses, individuals and those accessing via a gateway from the proprietary online services.

The number of people in the UK with access to the Internet will be greater than this and our own commissioned research indicated that 14 percent of respondents already had access at their home or place of work, or at school or college.

Having access to the Internet at the current time appears to be closely correlated to age and social status, with younger and wealthier sections of the population being more likely to have gained experience and familiarity with the media than other groups.

The potential of the Internet to deliver real benefits to the mass market is undeniable, but there is no certainty that this potential will be realised. Important issues relating to technology, cost, content and image will have to be addressed first and will have to be addressed by different people working in different areas.

The traditional media is sold on the Internet concept and has played an important role in increasing awareness, with the quality daily newspapers publishing weekly Internetcomputing supplements and developing online versions of their titles. Businesses are overcoming their initial scepticism and are subscribing for Internet access and establishing Web-sites.

Currently, the UK consumer base is small and restricted to a few 'pioneers' who have a suitable personal computer at home and who can afford to experiment with this new medium. For the bulk of the population, the costs of entry remain prohibitive and it remains to be seen whether the introduction of cheaper Network Computers (NCs) and Web-enabled televisions (WebTVs) will significantly increase penetration.

1997 is shaping up to be the 'crunch year' for the Internet in the UK. In terms of developing as a new mass medium, the Internet must overcome a number of barriers. In order to make more serious inroads into consumer homes, the Internet must become cheaper and faster and provide 'content' that is compelling, unique and better than can be found from more traditional sources.

Large companies such as British Telecom, News International and Virgin have launched, or are about to launch Internet access services aimed at the mass market. Many more are developing Web sites as part of their overall marketing strategy and are preparing themselves for the arrival of electronic shopping.